Ethnicity, Crime and Justice

• It is difficult to obtain accurate data for offenders. Some approaches look at imprisonment statistics and police arrests, but these are subject to interpretation.
• Many crimes are unsolved and offenders unseen, so the ethnic makeup of these offenders could be very different
• Black men have an arrest rate of 60 per 1000 people.
• Ethnic minorities are 3 times more likely to be stopped and searched
• Gilroy said self-report surveys showed similar levels of criminality in both Black and White communities. He said policing was focused on Black criminality, which was often political resistance to oppression
• Gilroy does not factor in that most Black crime involves Black victims
• Left realists say ethnic minorities do commit more crime, but this is because they are more likely to experience relative deprivation and marginalisation.
• Media representations of ethnic minorities as criminal further marginalise these groups and push them to criminality (sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy)
• Canteen culture - when off-duty, police may have a culture of racism and sexism to fit in
• The McPherson Report looked at the investigation into Stephen Lawrence's murder and concluded the police were institutionally racist and assumed Stephen was part of a gang because he was Black
• Morris suggests young people are more likely to be criminals, and there are a disproportionate amount of young people in BAME groups currently - stats are skewed by other factors
• Waddington et al say some areas are more densely populated with ethnic minorities, and these often coincide with areas of transition where there is less social cohesion and higher crime already
• The moral panic of the Black mugger began in the 1970s. They were demonised, and this led to the development of stop and search
• Hall says Black muggers served as a scapegoat for the crisis of hegemony happening at the time
• Sewell says Black criminality is caused by a combination of no father figures, previous bad experiences of white culture, and media influences
• Bowling and Phillips say Pakistani and Bangladeshi have lower crime rates despite also facing deprivation, and this may be due to stricter control within the home by parents
• Ethnic minorities may be targets of hate crimes, which are racially motivated